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Product description

From the busy, rugged quays of the Merchant Quarter to the ornate magnificence of the Great Basilica, from the imperious chambers of the Senate to the stinking, crowded alleys of the Swamp, secret cabals move unseen in the City-State of Tempest. These clandestine societies, bound by blood oaths and driven by power, conspire to seize control of Tempest. They wage a secret war with words, gold, and a knife in a darkened alley. When it is won, few will be wiser as to who really pulls the strings in this great city....
Dominare is a game of the hidden war for total control of Tempest. The weapons of this war are people, and Dominare provides dozens of "weapons" for you to wield. Use your agents to build a conspiracy, and watch it grow in power as you add to it. Agents spread influence through eight city districts each with unique advantages, and use your agents' abilities to wrest control of key parts of the city from the opposition... for in the end, control is all that matters.

From the Manufacturer

From the busy, rugged quays of the Merchant Quarter to the ornate magnificence of the Great Basilica, from the imperious chambers of the Senate to the stinking, crowded alleys of the Swamp, secret cabals move unseen in the City-State of Tempest. These clandestine societies, bound by blood oaths and driven by power, conspire to seize control of Tempest. They wage a secret war with words, gold, and a knife in a darkened alley. When it is won, few will be wiser as to who really pulls the strings in this great city. Dominare is a game of the hidden war for total control of Tempest. The weapons of this war are people, and Dominare provides dozens of "weapons" for you to wield. Use your agents to build a conspiracy, and watch it grow in power as you add to it. Agents spread influence through eight city districts each with unique advantages, and use your agents' abilities to wrest control of key parts of the city from the opposition for in the end, control is all that matters.

Top customer reviews

Some folks comment on the variability of the late game if you have the right cards. Well, there's a LOT of agents with powers that can really mess up your opponent(s)... it's not just one, but several ways the game can bust open. Is that bad? There's a way to come back, which is good... but it's dependent on luck, or a TON of patience, which can be good or bad. It's not just one or two strong cards, but many interesting ways to break things open in the endgame. I think that's actually pretty good... you can be out of it, and claw yourself back quickly with a sneaky play. The flipside is that you can do everything "right", and then lose it all in a hurry. In the end, we liked it. There's a lot of good cards to play with... strong abilities throughout the deck, and interesting characters from the world of Tempest.

Oh, speed of the game. It gets slower as the games go on, but I think it's faster than some people say. It can be a 2-hour game, but it can go much faster with people who aren't micromanagers. That being said, there's a lot of little tokens to play, and the arithmetic (counting up victory points) can be a drag. The mid-game is where this one shines, but your mid-game play can all go awry by the endgame... which probably turns off the micromanagers even more. In general, it's a game for people who are willing to take gambles and commit to strategy, with the ability for best laid plans to go to the crapper.

The game itself is pretty easy to learn and teach but the strategy will take several play throughs.Dominare revolves around two things: your 7 agents in front of you and the board where your influence is measured.You'll play through 7 "seasons". In each you'll read through a small scenario (often times it causes the player in the lead to pay gold), play a new agent card in front of you, collect resources from that (and other) agents, place influence (one of the two resources) on the board and then take two actions.Because you start season 1 with one agent, the game rolls along pretty fast. By the 7th season however, you'll place your 7th guy and you'll distribute influence from it and all other 6 agents thus making the end game quite longer.Two people (and this is a great two player game!) can knock out a game in about an hour.The strategy to the game is in your choice of actions. What I found most intriguing is that you can replace previous agents with one from your hand (best to keep that action in mind).But the single biggest advantage I've found after playing many times, is granting yourself additional actions via agent abilities. ALWAYS go for agents that allow you this. Secondly, ALWAYS inundate yourself with influence by placing agents side by side with matching keyword/s.If you have more influence and more actions then you'll win the game.Also, quick note on a rule that you WILL question: the influence in Dominare is considered to be endless. This means when you run out of cubes (and you will) you'll need to start using pennies or something. This is the only thing I don't like about the game. They could have included twice as many cubes.

This game was somewhat difficult to learn, and took a few game plays and then going back and re-reading the rules for us to get the hang of it. Once we did however this quickly became one of our favorite games to binge on. Catan is getting dusty on the shelf with this in the house. (ok we still play Catan with groups or certain crowds because more people know how to play it - but this is a serious contender for awesome game of the decade)

The game has many many characters with various abilities and skills and they keep the game interesting even playing over and over again. We've also found that several different strategies can be successful from one game to the next.

This game may take time to get the hang of due to rules and just the amount of time spent reading and learning about new characters in the beginning. If you have the attention span this game is worth it!!

Our average game play time is about 2 hours now that we are familiar with the rules and characters. Sometimes we start a game one day and finish it the next.

I really wanted to like this game more because I'm a fan of the rest of the series, but I'm afraid it won't get as much play as I hoped. It does feel like a more deep version of Courtier, and I'm sure if your group digs into games and can play them a dozen or more times this one is better, but we maybe get 10 plays out of a game we love. This game takes just a bit too long for a game that swings so heavily on card drawing.

The Scapegoat gets hammered way too often, especially if they get locked into position and there is very little reward to be first player or to have the minor VP adjustments. Also, the cards are very unbalanced, so much so that every game has come down to who happened to get the best cards. I'm sure being an expert at the game would help but there really is too much luck in the deck, and by the time you see someone has an ultra powerful setup there is very little you can do to combat them. By the time you draw, and draw, and draw cards that may stop them the game is already over.

I'm still giving it 4 stars because I'm sure in the right group this is the best game of the set, but for me I think I like the games in the order they came out. Courtier, Merchante, Dominare, Canalis.